Beachcomber

Rockaway has become a favoritesite for shooting television commercials.A few weeks ago, Dunkin'Donuts shot a number of commercialson Beach 129 Street. Lastweek, a buffet chain called the"Golden Corral" restaurants shota commercial at three locations - at the Belle Harbor Steak Houseon Beach 116 Street, Snug Harboron Beach 108 Street and HarborLight on Newport Avenue andBeach 130 Street. We wonder whatallure Rockaway brings to thecommercials, except for somebeachfront shots, which don'tseem to be on the schedule.

Now that JP Morgan-Chase has bought out the Washington Mutual Bank in the latest of commercial meltdowns, we wonder what that means for Beach 116 Street. As you already probably know, both banks have a branch on the shopping street, only a couple of doors from each other. The present WaMu chain is in the building that once housed North Fork Bank, which moved to a new location and became Capitol One Bank. In addition, there is a Citibank right around the corner in the Waldbaum's shopping center. You have to buy a scorecard to know all the players. Officials at Chase tell us that no decision has yet been made, but that it is clear that some branches of WaMu will be closed down.

Want to tell the MTA what youthink about its subway lines?Officials of the agency were handingout rider report cards atRockaway subway stops thisweek, asking riders to rate the ALine in a number of categories,including wait times, delays, securityand service. The cards arethen to be dropped into a mailboxfor return to the Maryland PRcompany that will tally theresults.

Most of us carry mobile phones these days, and those phones have lots of names and telephone numbers stored in memory. Emergency service personnel have sometimes used the phones to contact next of kin or family doctors. It's hard, however, to separate the wheat from the chaff, so a new recommendation is that everybody program in an emergency number, designating it by using three letters - ICE - to show that the number is the one to call in case of emergency. The idea was dreamed up by a paramedic who found a phone, but did not know what number to call. It's a good idea, and one that everybody who carries a cell phone should use.

The United States Postal Service put out an amazing statistic last week. With the advent of email and texting, and the growth of delivery services such as UPS and FedEx, the post office is becoming more and more irrelevant. Statistics show that more than onehalf of all the mail handled by the post office is direct mail advertising. More than half! Only a quarter of the mail delivered by letter carriers is first class mail. That's why the post office is fighting a move to allow people to opt out of getting what most consider "junk mail." "Efforts to convince people not to receive mail is really going to hurt," a post office spokesperson said.

Congressman Anthony Weinerplans to run for mayor whether ornot the City Council approvesextending term limits to 12 yearsfrom eight. "Anthony is runningfor mayor. He wants to offer avision of how to fight for the middleclass and those struggling tomake it," a Weiner spokespersonsaid in response to a questionrelating to whether he would runif Bloomberg was in the race.Others, however, won't be quite soexcited about battling Bloombergand his billions. City CouncilSpeaker Christine Quinn saysthat she is reserving judgment,and others who previously saidthey were interested in the job arepulling back.

A recent study shows that polling people by telephone may be skewing the poll results because it leaves out those who have no home telephones, preferring instead to use only a cell phone. And, since most of those who rely solely on cell phones are a younger demographic than those who use home "land-line" telephones, that means that fewer younger people are polled when that polling is done on land-line phones.

Seven years ago, the State Legislature,with the help of the Democraticmajority in the Assembly,helped to kill the commuter tax,and New York City has been behindthe eight-ball ever since. Thetax, which impacts anybody whoworks in New York City, regardlessof where she or he lives, wasthought by many to be equitablebased on the fact that those whoworked here also used vital servicessuch as fire, police, EMT, etc.Now, Assembly Speaker SheldonSilver says that the tax was notsuch a bad idea in the first placeand that it should be reinstated.

Waldbaum's corporate office has responded to a story that The Wave ran two months ago, in which it showed a beer bong being sold in the local supermarket. The beer bong is used by young adults in abusing alcoholic beverages through binge drinking, experts say. "The funnels that you refer to were part of a vendor promotional campaign and were not sold to us directly. However, once we learned of the funnels, they were immediately removed from the shelves and the store manager was instructed to send all the remaining funnels back to the vendor," said Anke Kullenberg, VP of merchandising.